Destination Imagination!

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Ralph Brown team during opening ceremonies for the Destination Imagination provincial tournament.

Ralph Brown School opened its doors to teams of young innovators when it recently hosted the Manitoba provincials for Destination Imagination.

Destination Imagination is the largest creativity program in the world; it is active in 30 countries including the Canada and the United States.

The program focuses on inquiry and project-based learning and blends STEM  (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with fine arts, and social entrepreneurship. 

"It's very interdisciplinary, it reaches across all of the curricular areas," said WSD Enrichment & Innovation Consultant Shauna Cornwell. "The teamwork, the resilience, the imagination and creativity it develops in students is unprecedented."

Destination Imagination publishes six challenges a year in areas such as technical, fine arts, etc. Multigrade/multiage school teams of up to seven students spend the school year trying to come up with the best possible solution.

(You can view the challenges here: https://www.destinationimagination.org/challenge-program/2015-16-challenge-previews/)

Groups compare their solutions at Destination Imagination tournaments.

Ralph Brown had a team of Grade 4 to 6 students competing in the fine arts challenge at the May 3 event. The team had to plan and perform a pre-1990 set mystery play.

"We've been working on our play really hard…we based it on the board game Clue," said Grade 5 student Michaela Callender. "Our play is just under eight minutes and we're really happy with it."

"We're a bit nervous but this isn't the first time we've acted in front of people," added Grade 6 student Cassy Klann.

The program also has instant challenges, in which students must problem solve in a short time period. One example of an instant challenge would be building a tower with 20 pieces of paper according to appraising criteria such as size, creative use of materials, etc.

"We had a lot of interest in the instant challenge program," Ms. Cornwell said. "We've done professional learning with teachers on instant challenges in our WSD STEAM Centres and the Inner City Science Centre. The classroom teachers have really bought into the program and that four C learning—collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity."

Destination Imagination's global finals will take place later this month in Knoxville, Tennessee.

With files from Shauna Cornwell

Sisler High School sent a team to take part in the science challenge.